Service Management

The CAS service management facility allows CAS server administrators to declare and configure which services (CAS clients) may make use of CAS in which ways. The core component of the service management facility is the service registry that stores one or more registered services containing metadata that drives a number of CAS behaviors:

  • Authorized services - Control which services may participate in a CAS SSO session.
  • Forced authentication - Provides administrative control for forced authentication.
  • Attribute release - Provide user details to services for authorization and personalization.
  • Proxy control - Further restrict authorized services by granting/denying proxy authentication capability.
  • Theme control - Define alternate CAS themes to be used for particular services.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.

The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value.

  • cas.service-registry.core.init-from-json=false

    • Flag that indicates whether to initialise active service registry implementation with a default set of service definitions included with CAS by default in JSON format. The initialization generally tends to find JSON service definitions from org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.services.json.JsonServiceRegistryProperties#getLocation().

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCoreProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.core.management-type=DEFAULT

    • Determine how services are internally managed, queried, cached and reloaded by CAS. Accepted values are the following:

    • DEFAULT: Keep all services inside a concurrent map.
    • DOMAIN: Group registered services by their domain having been explicitly defined.
    Available values are as follows:
    • DOMAIN: Group service definitions by their domain.
    • DEFAULT: Default option to keep definitions in a map as they arrive.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCoreProperties.

    Configuration Metadata

    The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

    Be Selective

    This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

    YAGNI

    Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

    Naming Convention

    Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc. When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value.S ettings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

    Validation

    Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

    Indexed Settings

    CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

    Caching Services

    CAS service definitions that are loaded from service registries are cached with a expire-after-write expiration policy. Such definition are automatically expired and removed from the cache, unless forcefully removed with an explicit reload operation. In particular, you want to make sure the cache expiration policy and period does not conflict with reload operations and schedules. For example, misconfiguration can lead to scenarios where the cache might be running empty while the scheduler is running a few minutes/seconds late. With an empty cache, authentication requests from applications might not be immediately authorized util the scheduled loader has had a chance to re-populate and reconstruct the cache.

    The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

    The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.

    The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value.

  • cas.service-registry.cache.cache-size=5000

    • Services cache size specifies the maximum number of entries the cache may contain.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCacheProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.cache.duration=PT15M

    • Services cache duration specifies the fixed duration for an entry to be automatically removed from the cache after its creation or update.

    This settings supports the java.time.Duration syntax [?].

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCacheProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.cache.initial-capacity=2000

    • Services cache capacity sets the minimum total size for the internal data structures.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCacheProperties.

    Configuration Metadata

    The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

    Be Selective

    This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

    YAGNI

    Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

    Naming Convention

    Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc. When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value.S ettings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

    Validation

    Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

    Indexed Settings

    CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

    Scheduler Loader

    CAS can be configured to load service definitions from connected sources and service registries on a schedule. Service definitions are loaded as background-running job, and the operation forces CAS to flush and invalidate cached version of service definitions and start anew.

    The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

    The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.

    The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value.

  • cas.service-registry.schedule.enabled=true

    • Whether scheduler should be enabled to schedule the job to run.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.quartz.SchedulingProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.schedule.enabled-on-host=.*

    • Overrides SchedulingProperties#enabled property value of true if this property does not match hostname of CAS server. This can be useful if deploying CAS with an image in a statefulset where all names are predictable but where having different configurations for different servers is hard. The value can be an exact hostname or a regular expression that will be used to match the hostname.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.quartz.SchedulingProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.schedule.repeat-interval=PT2M

    • String representation of a repeat interval of re-loading data for an data store implementation. This is the timeout between consecutive job’s executions.

    This settings supports the java.time.Duration syntax [?].

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.quartz.SchedulingProperties.
  • cas.service-registry.schedule.start-delay=PT15S

    • String representation of a start delay of loading data for a data store implementation. This is the delay between scheduler startup and first job’s execution

    This settings supports the java.time.Duration syntax [?].

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.support.quartz.SchedulingProperties.

    Configuration Metadata

    The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

    Be Selective

    This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

    YAGNI

    Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

    Naming Convention

    Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc. When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value.S ettings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

    Validation

    Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

    Indexed Settings

    CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

    Actuator Endpoints

    The following endpoints are provided by CAS:


    Service Management Web Application

    The service management webapp is a standalone web application that may be deployed along side CAS that provides a GUI to manage service registry data. The management web application MUST share the same registry configuration as the CAS server itself so the entire system can load the same services data. To learn more about the management webapp, please see this guide.

    Registered Services

    Registered services present the following metadata:

    Field Description
    id Required unique identifier. This MUST be a valid numeric value.
    name Required name (255 characters or less).
    description Optional free-text description of the service. (255 characters or less)
    informationUrl Optional free-text link to the service information guide.
    privacyUrl Optional free-text link to the service privacy policy.
    redirectUrl Optional URL to use when returning an authentication response back to applications.
    logo Optional path to an image file that is the logo for this service. The image will be displayed on the login page along with the service description and name. The value may be a relative path to the images directory of the CAS web application or it may be a full URL.
    serviceId Required regular expression describing a logical service. A logical service defines one or more URLs where a service or services are located. The definition of the url pattern must be done carefully because it can open security breaches.
    locale Optional locale name that may be used to customize the CAS UI when the service requests a ticket. Values can use the Spring Expression Language syntax. See this guide for more details.
    theme Optional theme name that may be used to customize the CAS UI when the service requests a ticket. Values can use the Spring Expression Language syntax. See this guide for more details.
    proxyPolicy Determines whether the service is able to proxy authentication. See this guide for more info.
    evaluationOrder Determines relative order of evaluation of registered services. This flag is particularly important in cases where two service URL expressions cover the same services; evaluation order determines which registration is evaluated first and acts as an internal sorting factor.
    authenticationPolicy The authentication policy to act as a complement or override for the global authentication engine. See this guide for more details.
    attributeReleasePolicy The policy that describes the set of attributes allows to be released to the application, as well as any other filtering logic needed to weed some out. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    logoutType Defines how this service should be treated once the logout protocol is initiated. Acceptable values are LogoutType.BACK_CHANNEL, LogoutType.FRONT_CHANNEL or LogoutType.NONE. See this guide for more details on logout.
    responseType Defines how CAS should respond to requests for this service. See this guide for more details.
    usernameAttributeProvider The provider configuration which dictates what value as the “username” should be sent back to the application. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    accessStrategy The strategy configuration that outlines and access rules for this service. It describes whether the service is allowed, authorized to participate in SSO, or can be granted access from the CAS perspective based on a particular attribute-defined role, aka RBAC. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    publicKey The public key associated with this service that is used to authorize the request by encrypting certain elements and attributes in the CAS validation protocol response, such as the PGT or the credential. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    logoutUrl URL endpoint for this service to receive logout requests. See this guide for more details
    properties Extra metadata associated with this service in form of key/value pairs. This is used to inject custom fields into the service definition, to be used later by extension modules to define additional behavior on a per-service basis. See this guide for more info please.
    multifactorPolicy The policy that describes the configuration required for this service authentication, typically for multifactor authentication.
    contacts Specify the collection of contacts associated with service that own the application. See this guide for more info.
    matchingStrategy Specify the strategy used to match the service definition against an authentication request. See this guide for more info.
    Service Types

    Note that while the above properties apply to all generic service definitions, there are additional service types in CAS that may be activated and required depending on the protocol used and the nature of the client application. Always check the dedicated guide for the capability you have in mind (i.e. OAuth, SAML, etc).

    Service Access Strategy

    See this guide for more info.

    Proxy Authentication Policy

    See this guide for more info.

    Required Authentication

    See this guide for more details.

    Tags & Properties

    See this guide for more info.

    Contacts & Owners

    See this guide for more info.

    Expiration Policy

    See this guide for more info.

    Matching Strategy

    See this guide for more info.

    Storage

    The following options may be used to store services in CAS.

    Storage Description Usage
    Memory See this guide. Store service definitions XML stored in memory. Changes require CAS repackaging and server restarts
    JSON See this guide. Store service definitions in flat JSON files. HA deployments require replication of service definitions.
    YAML See this guide. Same as JSON.
    GIT See this guide. Store service definitions in Git repository. Candidate for HA deployments.
    MongoDb See this guide. Store service definitions in MongoDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Redis See this guide. Store service definitions in Redis. Candidate for HA deployments.
    LDAP See this guide. Store service definitions in a directory server. Candidate for HA deployments.
    JPA See this guide. Store service definitions in a relational database (Oracle, MySQL, etc). Candidate for HA deployments.
    Couchbase See this guide. Store service definitions in Couchbase. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Couchbase See this guide. Store service definitions in CouchDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    DynamoDb See this guide. Store service definitions in DynamoDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Amazon S3 See this guide. Store service definitions in Amazon S3 buckets. Candidate for HA deployments.
    CosmosDb See this guide. Store service definitions in an Azure CosmosDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Cassandra See this guide. Store service definitions in an Apache Cassandra. Candidate for HA deployments.
    REST See this guide. Design your own service registry implementation as a REST API. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Custom See this guide. Design your own service registry using CAS APIs as an extension. Candidate for HA deployments.

    How Do I Choose?

    There are is a wide range of service registries on the menu. The selection criteria is outlined below:

    • Choose a technology that you are most familiar with and have the skills and patience to troubleshoot, tune and scale for the win.
    • Choose a technology that does not force your CAS configuration to be tied to any individual servers/nodes in the cluster, as this will present auto-scaling issues and manual effort.
    • Choose a technology that works well with your network and firewall configuration and is performant and reliable enough based on your network topology.
    • Choose a technology that shows promising results under your expected load, having run performance and stress tests.
    • Choose a technology that does not depend on outside processes, systems and manual work as much as possible, is self-reliant and self contained.